A Silent Epidemic with loud consequences: Pollution in Peru’s Moche River
November 9, 2025
FRA ANDES
TIL AARHUS
Following the journey of a river
from Peru to Denmark
Aarhus Festuge 2026
2.09 - 5.09
WHAT IS IT ABOUT?
Fra Andes til Aarhus is an environmental and cultural exhibition that brings together an installation and a short documentary film produced by the environmental NGO Saving Rivers and Lakes, in collaboration with students from Aarhus University.
Focusing on the Huallaga River in Peru, the exhibition presents the pollution of rivers and its environmental, social, and health consequences, while connecting these realities to Denmark through reflections and contributions from the students.
Visitors are invited to explore, engage, and interact with the exhibition, connecting with rivers, people, and nature across Peru and Denmark.
The Exhibition
The exhibition follows a journey in which visitors are invited to take a moment of pause, curiosity, and exploration.
Why are rivers important? Rivers are the arteries and veins of the Earth. Human societies have grown around them; animals and entire ecosystems depend on them. They are more than water, they become culture, sources of life, and connection.
From this starting point, the journey unfolds through the relationship between freshwater systems, human societies, and environmental change.
Through images, stories, and visual material, different perspectives emerge, using the Huallaga River in Peru as a point of departure, showing how communities are affected by river pollution and its environmental, social, and health consequences.
Consequences that extend beyond local populations and experiences, becoming part of a wider interconnected network that reaches into our everyday life in Denmark.
Connections begin to appear along the way between rivers, nature, places and people.
Collaboration with students
The exhibition is developed in collaboration with Aarhus University, where a group of students engages with its themes as part of their course. Their involvement is an key part of the project, bringing local perspectives and helping connect global environmental issues to a Danish context.
Working with literature and other materials, students explore relationships between nature and humans, with a particular focus on rivers. Their reflections become part of the exhibition itself.
The Film
The exhibition is presented alongside a short documentary film that brings together voices and lived experiences from Peru. Through interviews and visual material, the film follows the role of rivers in shaping human life, from their importance in the development of societies to the ways they are affected by contemporary environmental change.
Using the Huallaga River in Peru as a central thread, the film presents perspectives from local communities, environmental workers, health professionals, and cultural voices, including representatives of the Shipibo people in the Peruvian Amazon.
Their words and experiences offer more than explanation, they reflect ways of living with the river, and what it means when that relationship is altered.
These perspectives are brought into dialogue with reflections from students in Aarhus, connecting these experiences across Peru and Denmark and revealing how rivers today are part of wider systems of production and consumption that extend far beyond their immediate surroundings.
The film invites a closer, more personal understanding of the impacts of pollution, seen not from a distance, but through the people and environments that live with it.
Wednesday 2.09
Thursday 3.09
Friday 4.09
Saturday 5.09
This website is co-funded by the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of Saving Rivers and Lakes and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
